Fundraising - Cookery Book

[Guest terrydoo73]

Our Parents Group has come up with the idea of publishing a cookery book to raise much needed funds for the Playgroup. Has anyone out there ever done this? I do not know the first thing about costs in terms of getting it professionally printed or should we go down the road of in house publishing using say a laser printer? What could we include within it to make it more personal to the Playgroup ie should we include little pictures the children have produced?

[HappyMaz]

We did this a few years ago. Got parents to donate their favourite recipes, someone did some illustrations and we copied it in school and bound it all together with a comb binding machine.

 

We had a few hundred to make so we kept it to black and white. For fewer people I think I'd use the children's favourite recipes, and I'd definitely include photographs of the children either eating them or making them - you need something to hook the parents in and including their children is usually a good way of doing it.

[laura]

My School have done a cookery book. It's called 'cook up a treat with X, Favourite recipes of children, parents staff and friends'.

 

The PTA wrote to famous chefs and we have recipes from Rick Stein and the Hairy bikers too!

 

It's split up into soups and starters, main courses, desserts and baking.

 

It was published professionally and sells for £5 a book. They also sold a a few pages of advertising space at the back.

[Inge]

Also did one.. a long time ago now before computers! Ours came about because we cooked each week with the children and parents were constantly asking for the recipes as they were so good , so ours were all tested by the children making them, they came form staff mainly but also a few parents gave us some to include. we ensured there were savoury, sweet, uncooked ( those you could do without any cooking or special equipment), vegetarian, and then we included playdough as well. may have been more but it was a long time ago. yes we included children pictures as illustrations, or would now be pictures of the children's creations, not possible when we did it.

 

we were lucky and I had someone to type it up , and reproduce it for me - simple form and sold well , as it cost us nothing to produce all profits were ours.

 

for a small group it would be hard to go down the big cook book route as a school might, depends on where you want to sell it and how many you could sell, how much people would pay for a self produced book.

 

if people are giving you recipes who will check them all... would it be fair to just put them in and not have checked they taste ok?

 

look into costs of reproducing ( you need to make a profit)

how will it be sold and who to and where ( need a wide audience to maximise profit)

who will check the recipes

time involved - ensure the committee do it and you don't get roped in(unless you want to )- it takes time to do and they won't pay you for it.

 

there is probably more but good luck...